


in memoriam

by evenafterallthistime



Category: Lost
Genre: Death, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Loss, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evenafterallthistime/pseuds/evenafterallthistime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There are nights that she still wakes abruptly and reaches out for a figure that isn’t there a split second before she knows it isn’t there and she doesn’t know when she will stop. A part of her dreads the day that she may.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	in memoriam

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the whole series.

Kate watches when Claire, quietly sobbing, wraps her shaking arms around Aaron, head buried in the crook of his neck. Carole has eyes only for her daughter and grandson. Aaron looks at her, perplexed at the fact that a woman he has never seen before in his life is hugging him like this, arms hanging limply at his sides, a silent question in his eyes.  _Mommy?_

Kate only nods, ignores the ache in her chest, and smiles, silently responding that it’s okay.

Aaron awkwardly pats Claire on the back, trying to comfort her despite not knowing her, which only makes Claire cry harder, pulling back to kiss him tenderly on the cheek, gazing at him as if he’s made of gold.

“You’re so beautiful.” She says, and turns her head to look at Kate, overwhelming gratitude in her light blue eyes, eyes identical to Aaron’s, tears streaming down her face.

“Thank you.” Her fingers twist in Aaron’s pajamas, afraid to let him go. “Thank you.”

 

-  
   
His arms are wrapped around her neck as he curls in her lap, what he does when he has missed her. She holds him back.

The quiet voices of Carole and Claire in the next room disrupt the silence. Claire is crying again.

“She looks like me.” Aaron says, bemused, pulling away slightly to look into her face.

She looks at the boy she’s raised for three years, her heart cracking. She wonders just how many times her heart can break before she never feels whole again.

She runs her hand over the side of his face, the smooth baby skin familiar. “Yes, she does.”  
 

-

It will take time. She and Claire both know this.

Aaron needs both of them.

So Claire lives with her. It is the best solution.

Claire sleeps in the guest room (it’s all hers now) but can’t sleep in the dark and has to leave at least one lamp on throughout the night.

Kate doesn’t press her but Claire tells her anyway, brutally honest, eyes haunted. “In the dark I see him.”

The simple statement, formidable and unsettling, leaves Kate with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She doesn’t have to ask whom Claire is talking about.

“He’s dead.” She assures Claire, remembering vividly the feel of the shotgun in her hands as she shot him in fury, the rain as it pounded on her. “I killed him, he’s gone.”

Claire nods. “I know.” She brings a hand up to run over her short hair, a nervous habit. “But sometimes he’s still there.”  
 

-

Kate, in contrast, likes the darkness. She never used to but it’s almost comforting, lying in bed at night, staring up at a ceiling she can’t fully make out.

If she stares into the darkness long enough, she can see Jack’s face.

She only thinks of him when she’s alone, and dreams of him almost every night.

She dreams of their last kiss, the feel of his lips on hers, his hand caressing her hip, pulling her close and tight against him. His dark eyes stare into hers with longing and regret, his other hand held against the open wound at his side.

She wakes, hot and sweaty, her hair sticking to her face, an ache between her legs, and remembers, fully remembers,  _the blood, oh god the blood—_

She leaps out of bed, rushes to the bathroom, and throws up for the first time in years.

She sits on the floor, her back to the bathtub, one hand pressed to her chest, the other to her side, where his wound was, feeling her heart rattle wildly against her ribcage, and stays that way until she hears noise in the kitchen, a sign that Claire is awake, feeling a heart that she knows, knows with every fiber of her being, for him no longer beats.

 

-  
   
When Hurley visits a week later, out of the blue, and confirms what in her heart she already knew, she feels it break for what she knows is the last time.

“I found him in a bamboo field, with Vincent next to him—you know, the dog—and he looked so peaceful, Kate, like he was just sleeping after a really long day.”

She watches as Hurley’s eyes well with tears.

“I buried him next to Boone, Shannon, and Libby,” Hurley says the last name almost delicately, as if suppressing a painful reminder. “I thought he’d like that.”

Kate allows herself a brittle smile. “I think so too.”

Hurley nods, once, twice, then puts his hand to his eyes and weeps, head bowed.

Kate’s chest tightens, almost unbearably, but she does not cry. She puts her hand over his that rests on the table. “Thank you, Hurley.”  
 

-

Sawyer stays temporarily in L.A., not ready to go any further away yet, spending his days visiting his daughter, and he is the first one Kate thinks of after Hurley leaves.

She reaches for her phone, numbly punches in the cell phone number Sawyer had given her weeks ago, and waits.

He answers on the second ring.

“Kate.”

She opens her mouth to speak, but no words come out.

“Kate?”

She can hear the slight alarm in his voice.

It’s like she’s suddenly forgotten the ability to speak. She holds the phone tightly, her knuckles turning white.

“I’m on my way.”  
 

-

When he knocks on her door over an hour later, she opens it and swallows the lump in her throat.

“Jack’s dead.”

It shocks her just as much as it shocks Sawyer, how plain the truth of the statement is, and Sawyer’s eyes crinkle in sadness as he looks at her and understands.

And suddenly, in that moment, the grief that has filled her up inside for weeks explodes and she puts her hands over her mouth, trying not to scream, her eyes clenched shut, tears running down her cheeks.

Sawyer pulls her to him, embracing her; she leans her head against his chest, hands clinging to the edges of his jacket, and she cries.

The sound is loud in the still house (Claire and Aaron were out with Carole) and it sounds so foreign to her, so odd, like it’s not even coming from her. She can’t remember the last time she’s cried like this.

She cries and cries until his jacket is soaked, her face red and blotchy, almost falling against him, absolutely exhausted.

They just stand there in the doorway of her house, him holding her, and he doesn’t say a word because they both know he doesn’t have to.  
 

-

Afterward they sit together on her back porch, a patient silence between them.

“It will never go away,” Sawyer finally says quietly. “It will always hurt.”

She knows this. She reaches out and holds his hand until Claire and Aaron come home.

Sawyer greets them with a smile, hugging Claire and even stooping down to ruffle Aaron’s hair.

When they are left alone again at the door they just look at each other.

“Goodbye, Sawyer.” She calls him Sawyer because that’s all she’s known.  _James_  just didn’t feel right on her tongue.

Sawyer belonged to her. James belonged to Juliet.

It will stay that way.

“If you need me…”

She grasps his hand again, squeezing it gently. “I know.”  
 

-

That evening, as she heads up to bed, she sees Claire standing by the door, a picture frame in her hands.

Kate knows the picture by heart.

Claire looks up at her and instantly Kate knows that she knows the truth.

It must have been obvious, with Sawyer there and Kate’s eyes rimmed with red.

“I’m glad Aaron had him.”

Claire smiles wistfully and puts the frame back down on the table.

When Claire goes upstairs to put Aaron to bed Kate approaches the table and looks at it: a sunny day, Aaron on a swing, Jack crouched behind him, grinning, happy and healthy, before everything went to hell.

She runs her finger over the image of Jack’s face, almost a caress, the faintest imprint left in the dust in its wake.  _Me too._  
 

-

Kate has never been good with saying the right words out loud so she writes him a letter, pours her heart and soul into it, even though she knows he will never read it.

She writes in lengthy detail how much she loves him, how she was sorry she never told him earlier, how he taught her so much, how she felt absolutely lost and alone until he fixed her.

She writes about how she still dreams of him and is convinced she will continue to do so for the rest of her life, how she will always remember him, how he will always be the one for her, how he saved her in so many different ways, how she didn’t know how to stop running until she met him.

When she’s done, she rolls the papers up, sticks them in a bottle, and corks it.

Then she drives to the beach.

She decides to go near the evening instead of during the day when it’s crowded.

It will be the last time she will ever go to a beach.

She lets her feet sink in the sand as the small waves wash over them and throws the bottle as far as she can, watching as it splashes into the water.

There are nights that she still wakes abruptly and reaches out for a figure that isn’t there a split second before she knows it isn’t there and she doesn’t know when she will stop. A part of her dreads the day that she may.

She doesn’t know where the bottle will end up, but it doesn’t matter. She wrote the letter because it was her only way of telling him what she should have told him long ago.

She knows he’s gone. She knows he’ll never read it, but that was never really the point.

Then again, Kate smiles as she realizes, he probably already knew.


End file.
